


Fear of Knowing

by baunitchief (emeryazure)



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Drabble, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-27
Updated: 2018-01-27
Packaged: 2019-03-10 00:52:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13493382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emeryazure/pseuds/baunitchief
Summary: It had been a long few months of investigations and power plays, so much had changed and yet still the knowing remained.





	Fear of Knowing

**Author's Note:**

> here, have a quick, unedited oneshot inspired by wednesday's ep. enjoy!

Emily Prentiss was getting settled back into her office now, it had been a long few months with the investigation but it didn’t matter since she was back where she belonged, at the head of this unit. She felt grateful however that for all of Barnes’ political grabs and motives that it had been Jennifer Jareau that she had put at the helm of the ship while she was on administrative leave. There was certainly no one else that Emily could ever trust so implicitly than JJ, she realizes.

She thinks about the time that she and JJ had spent together trying to right all the wrongs that were being done by the brass. And as much as she had tried to forget about the blonde’s words just moments before the state of the unit was flipped on its head, she couldn’t.

_You know it also has a way of dredging up the past that you thought that you had locked away. The what-ifs and the if-onlys…_

If Prentiss had a cup of water for every time that she had thought about all their what-ifs and if-onlys then she would’ve drowned by now. She knows that somewhere along the line, they had gotten fractured and their futures splintered apart without even realizing it. Where had they gone wrong?

Had it been the moment that she told JJ to go for Will? Had that been it? If she had only kept her mouth shut and not tried so damn hard to interfere with what she thought was the blonde agent’s happiness then would everything be different? There’s no point in dwelling on it now, she knows. The choice is made and the past is the past but knowing that JJ thought about it too sometimes did not make it any easier on either of them.

She knows there’s no irony in the fact that it is now the blonde who was knocking on the open door of her office and stepping inside. Emily felt the mask slipping back into place, the mask she had nearly let slip away when the other woman had mentioned the thoughts of those once possible scenarios that they believed they had long let go of.

“God, is it good to see you back at that desk,” the blonde says with a smirk as she crosses her arm over her chest. “I don’t think I ever want to know what it looks like from back there again.”

Emily allows herself a small smile at the younger woman’s reasoning, “Well, you might want to reconsider seeing as you did such a damn fine job and were probably single-handedly the only thing keeping this unit together.”

JJ just shakes her head, “No, that’s much more your territory besides I’m not built for those kind of hours.”

“Was it hard on the boys and Will?” Emily asks with sympathy, she already knew that JJ had a hard enough time dealing with the hours of a profiler and being a wife and mother on top of it. She honestly couldn’t fathom how hard the title of acting unit chief had been on the woman.

“Uh, the boys were actually okay cause I kept reassuring them that it was only temporary anyway,” the blonde says with a simply shrug of her shoulders.

“And how did Will take it?” Emily inquires without really thinking much about it, this was a typical song and dance for them these days.

“Well… honestly?” JJ asks with a quirk of her eyebrow, Prentiss easily profiling the anxiety resting in the younger agent. She watches with intense scrutiny as the blonde turns back to the door and closes it gently before hesitating.

“What’s going on, JJ?” the brunette questions with a furrow of her eyebrows, concern lacing them now. “You know you can talk to me.”

JJ nods blindly at this fact as she stares off distantly at the floor before turning back and meeting the older woman’s brown irises. “Honestly, all of this brought to light just how dishonest and how many lies Will and I have been telling each other for a long time now.”

Prentiss shakes her head as if in disbelief, she was confused because she hadn’t been able to tell that anything had been going on in the younger agent’s marriage at all.

“Will wasn’t exactly convinced that this would be temporary and he told me that he actually hasn’t been happy with my job for a while now,” JJ says as she shrugs lightly, her lips pursing in thought. “He had been lying to make me happy but when this happened, he just- he said he couldn’t do it anymore.”

“Oh my god, I’m sorry to hear that,” Emily says sincerely, she never liked hearing this kind of news but it seemed pretty frequent in their line of work. “Well, now that it’s back to normal maybe you guys can try and work it out and if you need anytime-”

“I don’t need anytime, Em, cause it’s over,” JJ says with finality and something in her blue eyes read oddly determined. “He’s not the only one who's been dishonest and we’ve already started with the papers.”

“JJ, I don’t understand,” the brunette says seeming troubled. “You don’t want to even try to work it out?”

“Honestly, Em, you know how they say that you just know when it’s right?” JJ offers in way of explanation. “As much as I have and do love Will, I think I’ve always known that it wasn’t right, I mean half the time we were forcing ourselves to even spend time together and it’s why I broke up with him in the first place all those years ago.”

Emily just watches the younger agent in confusion, she wondered how long it had been like this and why she hadn’t ever talked to her about it. Well, maybe she did know why.

“Besides there’s always been someone else and somehow I’ve always known that it was right but,” JJ seems to cut herself short here, thinking through her words. “I guess time has never been on my side and I think I’ve been waiting on that person to come to me but honestly, I think I have to take matters into my own hands if I really want this to work.”

It seemed words were failing the female unit chief now as she simply stares. She knew that the blonde was getting more and more nervous as this conversation went on, that she could read.

“I think I’ve been too caught up in the job and the kids to really even take a step back and think about what I really want,” JJ says as she tilts her head as blue eyes bore into brown. “And I’ve always known what it was and I’ve been scared but I have always known it was right, you know?”

Emily seems to come out of her daze and collect herself, she shuffles a few papers around on her desk before she is rounding the table and finds herself leaning against the front of it as she sighs, “Yeah, I’m afraid I do know what you mean.”

JJ shakes her head incredulously, “No, I really don’t think you understand, Em.”

The brunette watches as the tears start to appear in the blonde woman’s eyes, this woman was entirely convinced that this all set on her. That this weight had been hers alone to carry for years and if she was honest, Emily would probably concede that it had been harder on the younger profiler by far.

“No, I think I do, JJ,” the older woman says seriously, looking her dead in the eye.

There’s something in the way Prentiss says this that finds its way into the root of JJ, as she is taken aback by sudden realization that she hadn’t been alone. This was not a fight she would have to win on her own, no. She's amazed that she hadn’t realized that there wasn't a single moment or fight that Emily hadn’t shown up for her when she needed her most. Not ever.

JJ’s head tilts as it releases itself from the tension it had held within it. She nearly relaxes but her veins and adrenaline are shooting a different need and desire through her now. The younger agent finds herself moving without really thinking. She finds her fingers lacing the jaw of the older woman and another hand wrapping itself around her neck as she finds the lips that she had so desperately craved for more than a decade and she gets absolutely lost in the feeling.

As for Emily, she shouldn’t be so shocked that this is where they had ended up but she can’t help but feel the breath rushing out of her as quickly as it had arrived with this woman hovering over her slightly and the brunette’s hand on her hips and the blonde nearly completely encompassing her now had never felt so right.

As they break away for air, the unit chief seems to find her voice first, “Yeah, I think I’m absolutely terrified that I know exactly what you mean.”

The profiler scoffs only slightly, maybe it’s a chuckle, maybe she’s feeling so much in this moment that she can’t even tell what it was. She has to shift her head which is attached to the other woman’s forehead away just to breathe and it shakes a little in trying to comprehend all that had happened, in both past and now overwhelmingly in present.

JJ can only ask of the unit chief, “What do we do now?”


End file.
